1014

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's letter to Reddit employees in response to blackout (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by gary@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

328 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Starting last night, about a thousand subreddits have gone private. We do anticipate many of them will come back by Wednesday, as many have said as much. While we knew this was coming, it is a challenge nevertheless and we have our work cut out for us. A number of Snoos have been working around the clock, adapting to infrastructure strains, engaging with communities, and responding to the myriad of issues related to this blackout. Thank you, team.

We have not seen any significant revenue impact so far and we will continue to monitor.

There's a lot of noise with this one. Among the noisiest we've seen. Please know that our teams are on it, and like all blowups on Reddit, this one will pass as well. The most important things we can do right now are stay focused, adapt to challenges, and keep moving forward. We absolutely must ship what we said we would. The only long term solution is improving our product, and in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail.

While the two biggest third-party apps, Apollo and RIF, along with a couple others, have said they plan to shut down at the end of the month, we are still in conversation with some of the others. And as I mentioned in my post last week, we will exempt accessibility-focused apps and so far have agreements with RedReader and Dystopia.

I am sorry to say this, but please be mindful of wearing Reddit gear in public. Some folks are really upset, and we don't want you to be the object of their frustrations.

Again, we'll get through it. Thank you to all of you for helping us do so.

Edit to include source: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/06/13/reddit-ceo-blackouts-no-revenue-impact/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] TheInternetCanBeNice@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure how many users will actually stay away. But if even a small fraction of the mods for these big subs stay away Reddit's gonna have a problem.

Lemmy will pull some mods away, traditional forums will pull some away, and that could really hurt.

However, only time will tell if that ends up happening.

[-] Marketsupreme@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago

Reddit is already due for a problem regardless of what the mods decide to do. Bots are no longer going to be a thing thus multiplying the work required for a mod by an unknown factor

[-] kofe@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Wait, can you explain this a bit more? I'm not the most tech savvy, but I'm reading this as things like automod and gandolf bot all being gone - the former being potentially worse? (No hate to LOTR fans, of course!)

[-] Stovetop@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago

Most mod tools and bots rely on API access and are just as affected by this change as third-party Reddit clients.

After the outrage started, Reddit has stated that they will make exceptions for mod tools and accessibility apps, but it requires manual approval, and a number are likely to be declined in spite of it. Particularly when considering that a lot of moderators made use of mod tools which were contained within these third-party clients that are shutting down, and are likely not going to be spun off into separate tools.

[-] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Yeah many people don't really realize just how bad it is when moderators leave, especially for a platform like Reddit where the mods are unpaid volunteers. On a different platform where they pay moderators they could just hire new ones, but with Reddit currently hemorrhaging money they are very much not going to be able to hire brand new moderators for every mainline sub.

Plus you have to account for the fact that while there are people who might be able to take their place now that number will quickly diminish I say become swamped with work and lack the proper tools to do decent moderation. It does not bode well for Reddit's future.